SGER: Understanding the Role of Impasses and Representation Changes in Creative Design: An Initial Study

这项由工程设计和认知心理学资助的小笔探索性研究(SGER)将开始探索创造性设计的认知基础的重要方面。最初的工作是基于这样一个前提，即创造性设计的一种机制来自于由于约束而在问题空间表示中搜索的限制，即所谓的僵局。僵局阻碍了对满意解决方案的搜索，需要改变用作设计问题搜索空间模型的表示法。这项种子赠款的目的是调查如何产生能够克服僵局的代表性方面的变化。这个为期一年的种子提案为揭示认知推理机制在创造性问题解决和创新设计过程中的潜在交错提供了初步工作。长期目标是利用这种理解通过更好的工具和方法来激发人类的创造力来改进创新过程，或者为为创新过程提供建议的计算机设计工具提供一个平台。这项工作的智力价值是更深入地理解人们如何克服创造性问题解决中的重大障碍--人们如何找到帮助他们解决导致新创新的困难设计问题的灵感。这项工作的更广泛的影响是通过更好地了解导致创新的思维机制和开发工具来加强这一过程，从而提高创新过程的效率和有效性。这项种子基金将进行两项研究任务。一种是寻求揭示克服僵局的基本机制的认知科学方法。第二部分试图揭示一个在设计过程中如何改变表现形式的模型。基本的研究将是关于环境刺激(暗示)是如何影响想法产生的，以及潜在的认知控制机制是什么。第二个研究任务是研究人们在概念设计过程中如何改变表征。此任务将使用协议分析和设计跟踪来分析在设计过程中的任何给定时间，人们的表示是什么、它如何变化、为什么变化，以及它是否重复。这项工作将探索表示如何因僵局而改变。预期的结果是创建一个框架和初步发现，以便在更长期的研究项目中进行。

This small grant for exploratory research (SGER), that is funded by Engineering Design and Cognitive Psychology, will begin to explore significant aspects of the cognitive basis for creative design. Initial work is based on a premise that one mechanism for creative design comes from the restriction of search in a problem space representation due to a constraint, known as an impasse. The impasse prevents search to a satisfactory solution, requiring a change in the representation that is used as a model of the design problem search space. The purpose of this seed grant is to investigate how changes in representation that enable the overcoming of impasses are generated. This one-year seed proposal provides initial work toward uncovering the potential interleaving of cognitive reasoning mechanisms for creative problem solving and innovative design processes. The long-term goal is to use this understanding to improve the innovation process through better tools and methods that stimulate human creativity, or provide a platform for computer design tools that advise the innovation process.The intellectual merit of this work is a deeper understanding of how people overcome significant hurdles in creative problem solving -- how people find the aha that helps them solve difficult design problems that lead to new innovations. The broader impact of this work is the improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness in the innovation process by better understanding the mechanisms of thought that lead to innovations and developing tools to augment that process.Two research tasks will be pursued in this seed grant. One is a cognitive science approach that seeks to uncover the basic mechanisms of overcoming impasses. The second seeks to uncover a model of how representation change is done during the design process. The basic investigation will be of how idea generation is affected by exposure to environmental stimuli (hints) and what the underlying cognitive control mechanisms are. The second research task will be to study how people change representation during the conceptual design process. This task will use protocol analysis and design traces to analyze what people's representation is at any given time during the design process, how it changes and why, and whether it iterates. This work will explore how representations are changed due to impasses. The expected outcome is to create a framework and the initial findings to pursue in a longer-term research project.